What Is This Greening About, Anyway?

Ground Trades Xchange is now in it’s sixth year. A veritable lifetime for a website. During that time I’ve tried to keep my ear to the ground, reading through thousands of threads, visiting hundreds of other sites and keeping up with more trade magazines than I’d like to count, to get a sense for the underlying current in our industry and where it’s headed. And along with that, what kinds of content we need to be bringing to GTX.

Really, it didn’t take much effort to see that one of the important directions the landscaping industry is taking is in going green. Seems appropriate for the “green industry,” doesn’t it? Maybe even past due. If you were watching TV in the last 3 months you probably saw PSA’s from the big networks talking about studios turning out lights as a fist-raising “Amen, brother!” to all those who are fighting the daily green fight. TLC is even launching shows dedicated to green living.

But the green movement in and of itself didn’t seem like something that initially we should dedicate web real estate to. Sure we’d have a discussion or two in our landscaping forums about different green-related topics like erosion control or organic lawn care, but there didn’t seem to be a strong business angle to the content. If anything, GTX is about landscaping AND business. The business end of going green seemed to fall short.

But over the last 24 months the catalog of potential for the green movement mounted, hitting it’s apogee with me during this past winter’s research. Some of my favorite magazines (Fast Company, Wired and Inc.) have had articles about green businesses every month, and I was seeing growing opportunities for earning business in this burgeoning sector of our landscape industry. It was time to jump in.

So it’s with great excitement and anticipation that I introduce all of you to “Greening,” Ground Trades Xchange’s home for going green. This will be the repository for new articles about all aspects of making your business green, from earning business installing work that contributes to the improvement of the environment, to making your internal operations more eco-friendly.

Keep a watchful eye on our landscaping forums. We’ll be making a big splash for Greening with the announcement of a contest where the winner will take home over $1,000 in tools!

More soon…

You might like the following content from the Ground Trades Xchange, served by Google: